Strange headlines, strange patches, strange geeks

At Large is relieved that Archbishop Flores was found alive and well after being gone for 14 hours. I’ll leave the rest of the reporting to the Express-News metro desk. MySA

But check out this early morning headline from the WOAI Web site (forwarded by EN reporter and word warrior Elizabeth Allen):

(Screen grab at 8:45 a.m.)

In case you’re wondering, an icon is defined as “an image or symbolic representation often with sacred significance.” Archbishop Flores is a holy man and a spiritual leader. He is neither an image nor a representation. He’s an actual person.

This story, however, reminds me of the time when I was 17, slightly inebriated, and talking with a friend while we ate at a Denny’s in Waco. Some guys with Bibles were going booth-to-booth proselytizing. I thought it was some sort of Baylor fraternity hazing ritual.

When the guys got to me, they smiled. One of them spoke:

Him: “Have you found the Lord?”

Me: “I didn’t know he was missing.”

They left. I continued talking to my friend.

More freaky military patches

Having never been in the military, I’m hard-pressed to come up with an accurate analysis of the military insignias on display in the two most recent two installments of this occasional series. But on first glance, some of these patches are funny, while others are disturbing.

Google Maps last year began rolling out street-level views of selected cities. That means you can drag and drop a figurine icon (a different icon than Archbishop Flores, by the way) onto selected major streets and get a ground level, 360-degree, photo view of that street. They started out with San Francisco and have added 23 cities. This week, Dallas was added. Now we’ll all be able to see what we’ve been laughing at for all these years without having to go there.

Sacha Baron Cohen, who is “Borat” and plays Adolfo Pirelli in the new “Sweeney Todd” movie, has a thing for … his thing.

In “Borat,” he wore a swimsuit best described as a “banana hammock.” And in the new film, he asked the costume designers for a wardrobe with “augmented pants.” This link is to a blog, and the comments include predictably witty repartee on the topic.